Fabulous 40’s and Workouts that Work

We all want to look and feel like we are 20 again, don’t we?? Well, I am here to tell you, you can get pretty close to that you just need to change your workout program. So many times we focus on cardio, and there is a place for that, but did you know building muscle is so much more important than hours on end of cardio workouts?

According to the Harvard Medical Review, bone loss increases 1% or more after the age of 40, in men and women. In order to offset this loss, we must build strong bones and muscles. Up to 8 million women and 2 million men in the United States right now have osteoporosis, softening of the bones, which leads to fractures and can alter lifestyles forever. So, how does building muscle help bone loss? Putting stress on bones by lifting weights is a very important part of making your bones stronger by stressing the bones in a subtle way, after all we don’t want to win the contest for heaviest weight lifted, we just want to make our muscles work and increase our bone strength, by activating our bone building cells (osteoclasts). When we put stress on bones by using hand weights, machine weights, or resistance bands we are increasing the signal to the bone building cells to get into action. As we age, we are not making new bone or closing growth plates like we did when we were younger, bones grow until we are in our 20’s, so exercise especially with weights is very helpful in waking those cells up and getting them into a growth state.

Building muscle also helps with our overall body toning and helps us increase our resting metabolic state where we burn more calories even when we are sitting still. Now that should encourage anyone to get some hand weights and start exercising! Muscle building exercises can be done with many different tools as mentioned above, hand weights are my favorite and sometimes resistance bands, the building of muscle happens gradually, but if you get on a consistent plan, at least 2-3 days a week and you only have to do about 10-15 minutes of exercise a day to see a difference in 30 days, try it!

For exercise tips join the free Fastingly Fit Facebook page or sign up for my 90 day ACTION Plan Program and learn about curing type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance and inflammation in your body. Send me an email and lets talk! The only thing holding you back is to begin.